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The 3 Mistakes That Are Killing Your Authority Marketing

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Position yourself as an authority and have you’ll prospects knocking on your door.

What if prospects came to you? That’s the point of authority marketing.

Authority marketing is a multifaceted approach that includes content marketing, public relations, speaking, and for many, authorship. Some call it “attraction marketing” or “doing thought leadership.” But whatever you choose to call it, the goal is to position yourself as an authority and have prospects knocking on your door.

This approach is particularly valuable in this era of information availability. Most sales conversations don’t start with a prospect actually reaching out to you or your sales team. The sales process often starts with a web search.

People who decide to market their authority take control of what appears in that web search. When the results of a web search position you and your company as experts in your field, your credibility rises.

Consultants, coaches, and professional service providers struggle with credibility when the bar to entry for their respective fields is so low. Marketing their authority helps them get higher-paying clients. Not to mention, making a point to incorporate speaking engagements, interviews, and written contributions builds marketing momentum pretty quickly.

If authority marketing is such a rock-solid strategy, how are people “killing” it? Well, there are a few key steps that are consistently neglected by almost everyone who engages in authority marketing.

Related: What Is ‘Authority Marketing’ and How Do You Achieve It?

1. Waiting for opportunities to come to you

People work hard to build their email and social media audiences. They believe that if they “get big enough,” opportunities will come to them. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It is true that when the environment aligns with your expertise, people may reach out to you.

For example, more diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) consultants are being asked for their expertise for a variety of marketing opportunities. But what about when the news cycle moves on? It’s not that DEI isn’t a topic that people are talking about consistently. But what do you do when people aren’t reaching out anymore?

Public relations pro Jennifer McGinley recommends consistently reaching out and building your web of connections.

“It’s so important to be proactive and consistently connecting and serving others in order to be seen as an expert or authority in your field,” she says. “The more visible you are, the more credible you can become. Essentially you are building a community. Clear, consistent content and communication build a community.”

Even when you get momentum, you should always be on the hunt for better opportunities. Once you’ve built up your speaker’s resume or Expert’s Portfolio, you’ll be able to secure opportunities that dramatically increase your credibility.

Some of the largest conferences have an application process for speakers. So even when you start getting invitations, be sure to actively seek out new opportunities to showcase your expertise.

2. Not creating authentic content

Take note of the adjective before “content” in this subheading. Authenticity is your unique marketability factor. What will people find when they click through to your website? If you’re hoping they’ll hire you or invite you to speak, your site had better be good.

In many cases, people find a website and blog devoid of any personality. Your site may be described as “professional, approachable, and competent.” What’s wrong with that? Well, ask yourself, how many other business websites can be described in this manner? A professional, approachable, and competent website won’t keep you from getting some clients. But it’s lukewarm at best, which means your website isn’t providing the highest ROI possible.

This is where authentic content comes in. When someone lands on your site, they should experience your unique brand. If your personal brand drives a lot of your business, as it does for a lot of service professionals, then your site visitor should feel as if perusing your site helps them get to know you.

Don’t view it as “just your website” or “just your blog.” Think of all of your content efforts as contributing to your content library. You may create unique content for a particular social media platform. But if it performs well with your audience, then you need to invest in growing your content library and creating content on your site.

Sarah Noel Block, founder of marketing consultancy Tiny Marketing, often counsels her clients to invest in what they own. “Too often, businesses get wrapped up in focusing on quick-win marketing like social media or paid ads. Instead, focus on what you own, not what you rent. You rent social media. TikTok can go down tomorrow,” she advises. “Rather, focus on what you own — your website and your email list. Building a content library increases your SEO, your Know, Like, and Trust factor, your email list, and gives you something to say in email and social media marketing. It’s the marketing that keeps on giving.”

If you approach your content authentically, then your prospects (marketing opportunities or new business) will already feel as if they know you. This is one of the ways they convince themselves that you’re a good fit before they even speak with you.

Not that even rote topics can use your fresh take. Many professionals take the time to create content surrounding common topics related to their expertise for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. There’s nothing wrong with this as long as you remember one thing: your unique experiences are what make this content special.

Explaining why it’s important to create header tags in blog posts and website content is a good topic for a content professional. But when you add in the story about having to edit 50+ blog posts for a client to better optimize their content, you do two things:

  • You show that you go all out for your clients.
  • You give them a story to remember your tip with.

Anyone can give a tip. But that story belongs exclusively to you.

3. Not marketing your expertise-showcasing opportunities

Have you been a guest on a professional webinar or podcast? Much to the dismay of many event organizers and show hosts, guests often don’t market their appearances. This is a missed opportunity to support your host and also to market yourself.

Marketing an expertise-showcasing opportunity allows you to get in front of your host’s audience outside of the opportunity itself. More important, it gives you a chance to interact with that audience.

Bill Sherman, the co-host of the Leveraging Thought Leadership Podcast, offers a few great recommendations. At a minimum, guests should comment and like any post where the event organizer, article author, or podcast host mentions them. A thoughtful comment on social media, especially LinkedIn, can really push up engagement — engagement that’s great for you and the organizer, author, or host.

Next, he said that podcast guests should “rate and review the episode on whatever podcast player they use. It will help the episode (and the podcast as a whole) show up more frequently in searches.”

He also shared that when guests engage with audience members who leave comments on social media, he’s thrilled. It doesn’t happen often for most podcast hosts and community builders, but when it does, it creates conversations that lead to all sorts of beneficial connections.

These engagement opportunities are critical for expanding your network and building your authority. Because most people don’t engage this way after an expertise-showcasing opportunity, you’ll stand out even more when you do. Not to mention, the people who take the time to comment warrant a response from you. They could be your people, but not if you ignore them.

Fix these three mistakes and your authority marketing will take off

If you’re making one or all three of these mistakes, there’s good news. You can work to fix them right now. Go back to your most recent interviews and engage with the audience in the comments. Get started on your content plan so you can build up your content library at any time. Actively seek out the opportunities you need to grow your authority and your business.

Being aware of a problem is half the battle. Now you have the knowledge to fix it.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images 

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Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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Why Are Instagram And Facebook Becoming Popular Advertising And Business Platforms For Startups

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  • With over 2.5 Bn monthly active users, Facebook still is a giant on the social media scene
  • Facebook enjoys over 2.26 Bn active mobile users, accounts for 45% of monthly social media visits
  • Instagram has over 500 thousand active influencers ranging from technology, food, humour, fashion, lifestyle and many more industries

Facebook and Instagram have become inevitable tools for the modern marketer. These platforms have especially gained immense importance for start-ups and small businesses. As most companies can’t be everywhere at once, especially the cash-strapped start-ups, that’s why it’s crucial for businesses to be strategic in gauging which social media platforms will be beneficial for them to build a presence on.

With over 2.5 Bn monthly active users, Facebook still is a giant on the social media scene. It has redefined the way social networks are perceived and has effectively widened the possibilities that social media has for businesses. Facebook enjoys over 2.26 Bn active mobile users, accounts for 45% of monthly social media visits, and is available in over 100 languages. On average, a user spends 38 minutes on Facebook.

Instagram is a relatively new arrival on the block. In a short span of time, Instagram has achieved impressive statistics. It has scaled a base of whopping 1 billion monthly active users and 500 million daily active users, positioning itself as one of the fastest growing social media channels globally. It has over 100 million photos uploaded daily with an average user spending 28 minutes per day.

But that’s not all. Instagram has emerged as the 6th most popular social network in the world and is home to over 500 thousand active influencers ranging from technology, food, humour, fashion, lifestyle and many more industries.

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought major changes in consumer behaviour with online shopping and purchases gaining ground. In the grand scheme of things, these two social networking sites will particularly prove to be powerful as they will present more opportunities for brands to engage with their consumers. However, its not just big brands who stand to gain from this development. Even start-ups can leverage the power of these social media sites to increase their visibility and connect with their target audience.

Here’s a roundup of the reasons why Facebook and Instagram have become popular advertising platforms for new and upcoming start-ups.

Facebook 

On Facebook, content appears in the users’ feed based on algorithms. Hence, multiple strategies such as paid ads can be used to effectively get more views on a brand’s posts. Facebook has the most diverse audience and thus, it is counted as one of the best social media platforms for small businesses to reach their target market – whoever that audience might be.

Along with providing the ability to connect with a large number of people from diverse walks of life, there are some unique features that Facebook offers to a start-up. Its targeted digital advertising platform is amongst the best tools for marketing. Facebook ads are apt for niche targeting as well as broad targeting. These ads help identify those people who are most likely willing and ready to buy the company’s products or services. This feature ensures that a start-up can get their ad content in front of the right audience at the right moment of time.

Another reason that makes Facebook an attractive option for start-ups is its e-commerce integrations. Users can purchase through the social media platform itself. Making a purchase is just about clicking one button. Now Facebook has even allowed brands to communicate with their customers through Facebook messenger. Through this feature, start-ups can easily provide shipping updates and other order related details via the Facebook channel as well.

Instagram 

Instagram’s one-of-a-kind interface has some powerful benefits for a start-up business. One of the most striking features is that it enables companies to tell their brand’s story with unique, versatile and engaging visual content. Unlike other social media networking sites, Instagram works through visuals and is focused on both images and videos. No matter which industry, Instagram caters to every niche area and can be utilised to showcase all kinds of products. Even its targeted sponsored ads are immensely helpful in increasing a brand’s visibility.

The Instagram stories make marketing even more catchy and take the advertising game a notch higher. With Instagram stories, start-ups can live-stream videos and share them with their followers. These stories are the best way to provide behind-the-scenes footage and share important news and updates with the followers. Even Instagram allows companies to message their users directly, which can be a great tool for customer service.

A commonality among both the social media platforms is their analytics, which provides insights into how the campaigns and ads are performing so that if required, improvements can be made in the future for better results. The ads, ranging from video ads and single image ads to carousel ads and lead forms (only on Facebook), help brands generate loyal following among different audiences.

Summing It Up

Facebook and Instagram have both equally garnered immense popularity since the time of their inception. And both are equally beneficial for business. It’s up to the companies to decide which platform will prove to be the best for them looking at their target audience and the kind of content that they are looking to publish to build their social media presence.

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Sourced from Inc42

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Why every brand should be anti-capitalist

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By Mordecai

Advertising is an expression of consumer capitalism. Yet to succeed in today’s marketplace, brands need to become more anti-capitalist, believes Innocean’s global head of innovation and partnerships, Mordecai.

Consumers want a better deal, and they deserve it, too. Not just better products and better services, but better advertising. To deliver on this, brands must break free from established tropes that define how they do business. Or to put it another way, they need to start thinking anti-capitalist to be more pro-consumer.

This might sound contradictory, but as a long-standing anti-capitalist and activist who works in advertising – the communications of capitalism – let me explain. By anti-capitalism I mean not believing you must participate in the capitalist structure in which you were raised. Instead, it about is believing there is an alternative.

I fell into advertising rather than entering by a conventional route. I was already a storyteller, though back then I was working in digital TV production. But the budgets were small, so I went to brands to get funding. Then those brands asked me to start telling their stories too, and things grew from there.

As a storyteller, people have always been my focus. To be pro-consumer is to be in support of consumers getting a better deal. And in advertising, that can only happen when humans are at the centre of what we do – especially storytelling.

Yet how many brands today communicate in a human-centric way? How often can you see people at their heart of their strategies. How many demonstrate they believe in their consumers as nuanced individuals capable of making their own choices? Far too few, in my opinion.

To be more anti-capitalist, a brand must think and act differently, and it can start to do so by challenging business and marketing’s pervasive tropes – of which let me give you three examples.

The first is the winner-takes-all approach to doing business that leads many companies to let competition shape their strategies. I’m not saying a brand owner’s rivals’ competing strategies should not be analysed and unpicked, far from it. My point is, brands’ competition should not be used as a template for what they do, how they do business or their point of view.

You can look to Away, a luggage brand that set out to turn a relatively boring necessity into an enviable statement at an affordable price without structuring itself around a mission to compete with Samsonite.

Or the brands that rewrote the purchase and delivery rule book, such as subscription toothbrush Quip. Meat alternatives are also leading the way, like the once-scrappy start-ups Beyond Meat and Impossible. Crypto-currencies are also not out to compete with cash, but provide an alternative to it.

The next trope to challenge is established systems that all too often act against inclusivity. One powerful example is Anomaly, which put its own money into the business ventures of clients, such as beauty line Eos.

AdQuick’s advances in the out-of-home market disrupted a narrowly controlled sector and broke the system by offering more opportunity for smaller brands to engage in a system that was previously only for big hitters.

We’re also seeing this with storied industries disrupted by the influx of VCs and collective ownership, with, for example, the likes of Serena Williams, Jessica Chastain and Eva Longoria investing in the US National Women’s Soccer League LA team.

The third trope concerns received wisdom and established practices around building affinity through targeting. This is about celebrating not just one aspect of a person as identified by traditional segmentation, but the whole individual.

We see calls to this through the increased encouragement to honour intersectionality with, for example, the added option of non-binary as distinction and removal of such self-disclosure boxes on job applications altogether. The generational push for acknowledgment of trans women at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement is another illustration of this.

This is about a brand recognising it can’t reach every audience, nor can it appeal to all – not least while audiences are fragmenting at pace and growing increasingly diverse.

And it’s about brands re-thinking how best to build affinity. On-screen inclusivity is essential and should be a given, but more is needed. I’m talking about creative concepts and projects that don’t so much build affinity through direct identification but that are open and welcoming everyone to the table.

Think MediaCom’s ‘Inclusive Planning’ initiative, a self-declared departure from the status quo where diverse audiences are only considered for specialist briefs.

Or Vice Media’s challenge to advertisers over blocklists – in particular, around blocking Black Lives Matter, Muslim, queer and related key lists which Vice has removed from brand blocklists.

To truly build affinity with their brands, the time has come for senior marketers to shift their focus from the more exclusive brand safe to the more inclusive brand suitable.

These are just some of the spaces in which brand owners can act more anti-capitalist.

In today’s world, if brands are to engage more effectively with the people they serve as individuals, the only way to behave is pro-consumer.

Feature Image Credit: The only way to behave is pro-consumer, says Mordecai, and brands like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are leading the way

By Mordecai

Sourced from The Drum

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Top 10 Reasons to Use Social Networks for Advertising

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By Thomas Glare.

Description: Despite the constant traffic in social media, some businesses still think they are better off not using this amazing and largely low-cost resource for advertisement. We have a few reasons why they might want to reconsider that opinion.

Introduction: Social media platforms are everywhere. If you have a smartphone and Wi-Fi, you have access to everyone you know and everyone they know every second of the day. And, while using it to reconnect with old friends is a pretty solid way to utilize such a versatile medium, it can also be a great resource for marketing.

These days, it seems like everyone has social media accounts. From toddlers to grandparents, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have kept us connected, for better or worse, and allowed us to know everything about everyone. It is even possible to win real money by clicking on an ad or doing a social media quiz.

Marketing in the Age of Social Media

In the past, ad traffic was expensive and could only come from television, radio, and newspapers. Promos run maybe once an hour to as little as once a week, and the target audience was only listeners, watchers, or subscribers. And advertisers hoped their target market was tuned at just the right time, but it was essentially a gamble.

These days, social media advertising has almost overtaken all other forms of marketing. As a matter of fact, when a marketing firm lists their services, if the phrase “social media campaign” isn’t mentioned, a lot of businesses will move on. It isn’t the niche market of ten years ago, but a living, breathing animal of its own.

Your Next Marketing Strategy

White pages do work, and emails are still a heavy hitter in the marketing game. But if you want to get the most eyes on your product or service, you can’t beat the endless traffic of the big three. These social media networks have made a killing based on this knowledge. So, why shouldn’t you?

Here’s how:

1.    Ready and Waiting

Your customers are on social media. You want to connect with them. So, like AT&T used to say, “Reach out and touch someone.” They are waiting for you to tell them what you have to offer. Don’t leave them in suspense.

2.    Branding

You aren’t just a business but a brand. And your brand is the face of your company. People recognize big brands because they stand out, and there is something special about them. Get your brand out there and introduce yourself!

3.    Improving Relationships

Online reviews have replaced comment cards, and access to business owners has become commonplace. Using social media to stay connected with your customers is the best way to know whether your business is doing well, and what to do to fix it if something is wrong. Instantly.

4.    A Wider Net

Any social media manager will tell you not to aim at small but launch a large campaign to draw big attention. As far as social media plans go, this is a valid idea. You may inspire new business just because you took a chance on an untapped market for your niche.

5.    Low Money Down

Let’s say you are a casino. Your business is to bring in people with money to spend. But how? Free coupons! You put a free coupon for slots free spins on Twitter, and the traffic flows into your site. And you paid next to nothing for it. Social media marketing is the most cost-effective medium for product promotion.

img alt: social media marketing

6.    Competition

Everyone has a business out in the world that is trying to take your customers and your dollars. And guess what? They already have a website and tons of followers, subscribers, and valued customers. They aren’t taking your business; you are giving it to them by not having a social media strategy.

7.    Loyalty

People like to know who they are buying from. A bad social media brand can kill a business, just because of the owner’s improprieties. But if your customers are aware of your story, and it garners trust and makes you seem like a quality human-being, they instinctively want to support you.

8.    Drawing a Bullseye

While you can throw out a huge campaign that blankets the entirety of social media, you can also target specific people, catering to your most fervent customer base only. It is similar to fishing with a bait that only certain fish like. Sure, you will get some outsider nibbles, but you will hook what you came for.

9.    Up the Ladder

Along with knowledge of SEO, traffic algorithms have a hand in search engine rankings. The more people visit you, the higher you are on the list when customers search for your business. Typically, the average web surfer will pick one of the top five links when looking for just about anything.

10.Reaching and Grasping

Just like the Internet is global, so is social media. And that means you can now advertise all over the world from one or more platforms with ease and speed. Customers in Estonia can buy your product, receive it, and give you feedback in a matter of days, not months like in the past. It has connected the commerce of the world.

Conclusion

Social media management may seem a little odd to those with old school marketing ideas, and that makes sense. So many advertising fads have come and gone, it can be puzzling if getting an account for your business might just end up as a waste of time. But the upshot is that advertising on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are so quick and easy that you’re actually wasting more time trying to come up with reasons not to.  Do you advertise your business on social media? Has it helped your bottom line and customer traffic?

By Thomas Glare

Thomas Glare runs a marketing firm and believes in the power of advertising through social media platforms. He recognizes it as a vital tool in promotional mediums and uses it on a regular basis for his clients to promote his own business interests.

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Streamline Your Marketing Plan With 75 Percent Off This Email Platform

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By StackCommerce Team.

Kirim.Email filters out spam, bots, and other drags on your marketing bill.

Online marketing can seem pretty impersonal; everyone has a social media branding plan, but it’s disheartening hoping for even a quick glance from potential customers amid the flood of memes and clickbait.

That’s why it’s more important than ever to maintain the fundamentals of email marketing. Email addresses are like gold to up-and-coming businesses, and those newsletters and messages you send are read on customers’ home turf—making them a lot more likely to respond. Of course, email marketing isn’t without its own hazards. To deal with them, you need a service like Kirim.Email to streamline your plan and weed out any wasted (and potentially harmful) contacts.

The all-in-one tool lets users build a list of subscribers and send an unlimited amount of emails from one central dashboard. Schedule them weekly, daily, or multiple times a day for no extra cost. More importantly, Kirim.Email automatically validates all your addresses, and can detect and delete “zombie” accounts or those that are simply a front to send spam or malware. Not only are these fake addresses potentially harmful, they’re an added drag on the cost of your marketing campaign.

That’s hardly all the service does, though. Build your own landing page directly through Kirim.Email, with full functionality and access to thousands of graphics, photos, and other assets; set up surveys through Google Forms or Google Sheets and incorporate them directly into the list with a third-party add-on. And do it all with no coding required. Kirim.Email integrates seamlessly with popular web platforms like WordPress and Facebook, allowing users to focus on what’s really important: the message you want to send to and the connection you want to make with customers.

By StackCommerce Team.

Sourced from PC

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The Basics Of CBD Marketing Vs. CBD Branding

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By Alex Bider.

Building a CBD business in 2020 and beyond is a challenge that more and more entrepreneurs are answering. CBD marketing is tricky because of the laws and restrictions put in place by both the government and marketing platforms such as Facebook and Google.

CBD branding is equally as delicate — it’s important to differentiate your company from others, but you must do so without creating brand assets that could violate guidelines, laws or regulations (both state and federal).

Those are just a few of the complications that come with putting a CBD business together. If you think you’re up for the challenge (or better yet, if you’ve already answered the call), this guide will help you navigate the basics of CBD branding and marketing.

I’m passionate about helping CBD brands succeed. In leading a marketing agency, I’m always ready to help CBD brands navigate the mess of restrictions when it comes to marketing and selling CBD products. Based on my experience here are the basics that CBD brands should consider.

What Is CBD?

Cannabidiol (CBD) is one of the main parts or components of the marijuana plant. However, unlike its psychoactive and hallucinogenic cousin THC, CBD does not cause any kind of “high.” There is a large amount of anecdotal evidence that suggests CBD could have a myriad of health benefits, which we seem to still be skimming the surface of as more scientific research is needed. Although it is early days in terms of CBD for medical use, many people find it beneficial for treating many different ailments.

Current Laws And Regulations

The legality of selling and marketing CBD products is difficult to nail down. The official word from the Food and Drug Administration is that legality depends on how the product is packaged, branded and marketed. For example, CBD cannot be packaged or branded in a way that could be construed as appealing to minors, and cannot be sold as part of food products.

When it comes to platform-specific regulations, most of the big players like Facebook and Google simply do not currently allow CBD advertisements.

The Difference Between CBD Marketing And CBD Branding

Marketing is the art and science of telling a company’s story to the right audience in the most effective way possible. Branding is the practice of building that story along with the company’s assets, such as logos, business cards, webpages and so on. When broken down into those simple terms, it seems fairly clear that this isn’t a chicken-and-egg situation. It’s important to have strong branding for your CBD company before you put a lot of effort into marketing.

Questions To Ask Before Getting Started

Before getting into either branding or marketing, it’s important to know the answers to a number of questions. These include:

• Who will be your main target audience (i.e., age, geographic location, etc.)?

• What main problems does your audience hope to resolve with CBD?

• Will you target existing CBD users or those who may be interested in CBD?

• Where will you sell your products, and what are the laws and regulations there?

Answering these questions is important to your success because without the answers you’d essentially be shooting in the dark. Once you have a clear picture of who your ideal customers are, why they’ll be interested in your products and any relevant regulations, you’ll be ready to start building your brand.

CBD Branding

Modern CBD brands would be wise to move away from the association with cannabis and “getting high.” For one thing, CBD has nothing to do with getting high; for another, that notion may turn off some people who would otherwise use CBD products. In my experience, CBD branding is done best when it appears soft, accepting and comfortable.

This makes a lot of sense; after all, many people have turned to CBD to soothe pain and anxiety. So, how can you use your branding to share your company’s unique message with the world?

CBD Marketing Basics

Once you have your brand assets figured out, it will be time to find ways to share them with your ideal customers. Your branding may need to include:

• Brand positioning (who you are and what you do and why)

• Brand promises (what you’ll deliver to your customers)

• Brand assets (e.g., colours and fonts, stationery and business cards, designs or images, and internal templates and standard operating procedures)

An easy and free way to start marketing your brand is by creating your social media accounts. Make sure they use the same name (or if that’s not possible, similar/linked names) and employ your brand assets to their fullest potential. You can market CBD organically on Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, so picking two out of those three may be a good way to begin.

Focus On Branding First

While CBD marketing and branding are both important, building a strong brand will ensure that you get the most out of the money you put into marketing.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

By Alex Bider.

Alex Bider is the CEO and Senior Internet Marketing Consultant at 2Marketing.com. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

Sourced from Forbes

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How Farrow & Ball is bringing the luxury experience online for digital DIYers

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By Rebecca Stewart

Farrow & Ball’s sales have grown “exponentially” this year thanks to a home improvement boom. The Drum catches up with the 75-year-old posh paint purveyor’s chief exec to find out how it has been fine-tuning its digital capabilities and baking luxury into its online experiences as it looks to appeal to DIYers and professionals alike.

Paint and wallpaper company Farrow & Ball is famous for its muted colour charts, on which you‘ll find shades with names such as ‘Downpipe’, ‘Elephant’s Breath‘ and ‘Hague Blue’. Its intensely pigmented paints have earned it a reputation among interior designers and influencers alike, with the aspirational brand selling not only distinctive tins but a lifestyle that goes with them.

This year, the business has seen the best financial results in its 75-year history, powered by a lockdown decorating boom that has pushed digital sales through the roof as people seek to reinvent the spaces they are spending more time in. In the year to August, sales were up 4.1% for the British brand, reaching £87m. Online sales were up 14% over the same period, representing over 10% of group sales versus 9% in the prior year.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in our digital demand,” explains chief executive officer Anthony Davey, the ex-P&G marketer who also sat in the top spot at GHD. “At one stage, our demand had gone up 15-fold online,” he explains, saying that “almost overnight” the business went from selling 90% of its stock through third parties to a 50:50 split between retail and direct-to-consumer (DTC).

This shift was aided by the brand’s small-batch production methods, which see all of its manufacturing based out of Dorset. “It’s quasi-handcrafted, we go through the process twice to ensure that the quality and consistency of our paint is exceptionally strong. So we were able to ‘pick and pack’ for individual customers. Lots of [bigger] companies that are highly scaled with a mass manufacturing approach weren’t able to offer that individual ordering service.”

Its marketing strategy has shifted too. Farrow & Ball has upped its investment in PPC and Google Shopping to capture the demand from buyers. For people who are in the discovery and exploration stage, the company is investing in social media content for its 2 million followers across the “obvious” channels like Instagram and Pinterest.

Its commitment to quality has been evident not only in the assembly of its products, but also in the way it has shifted the services it offers to customers online.

Bringing the Farrow & Ball experience online

When showrooms shut at the start of March, the paint company brought a live-chat function to its website. It has also started allowing customers to book virtual appointments with its specialist colour consultants – seasoned interior specialists who help people pick out the perfect swatches and themes for their homes.

The brand has also run live sessions with some of its more high-profile colourists and designers (the same ones who painstakingly curated a fresh colour pallette for the recently redesigned Museum of Modern Art in New York), giving people the chance to ask questions and receive tips.

“In lockdown, we brought our designers into our social media channels to give customers a ‘daily dose of colour’, which in the past is something we haven’t done much of.

“We want to make sure we‘ve got sufficiently engaging and relevant content, and people want to see us as a source of inspiration and advice. That‘s very much a strategy of the whole business. If you were to go into our showrooms or on to any of our channels, you‘ll find people who‘ve got many years’ experience in interior design or fabrics or all different aspects of design. They‘re much more than just someone managing a store. They have passion for the industry and passion for the category.”

Having recently appointed BMB as its lead creative agency, the company isn’t just focusing on digital – in fact, it has just invested in its first series of TV ads, which gently poke fun at Farrow & Ball’s serious image.

Featuring a cast of neurotic decorators doing everything they can to keep their paint pristine and protect their freshly decorated walls and woodwork from the threats of muddy dogs, messy children and careless wine drinkers, the self-aware ‘Modern Emulsion’ campaign will be stacked against a variety of KPIs.

Davey points to two kinds of metrics – growth and brand awareness, but also engagement and attribution on the digital and VOD side.

He says his firm wasn’t inspired to make its TV debut owing to Covid-19. “It is more just about continuing the evolution of the brand.”

Feature Image Credit: Paint and paper company Farrow & Ball is perhaps best known for its muted colour charts

By Rebecca Stewart

Sourced from The Drum

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Avon ‘blows the dust off’ its brand after a digital overhaul

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By Rebecca Stewart.

Avon is honing in on its ability to transform women’s lives, with a global campaign asking people to reconsider the 135-year-old beauty business. Its chief brand and beauty officer explain why now is the right time to “blow the dust off.”

When you think of Avon, you most likely conjure up images a of handbag-sized catalogue filled with scented pages and pictures of Senses bubble bath and Skin So Soft spritz. And possibly a neighbour armed with a bag full of miniature lipsticks and nail polishes who would regularly ding the doorbell.

However, over the past 12 months the brand has been looking to carve out its own place in the global $532bn beauty and personal care market, heavily investing in digital tools for its army of direct sellers. It now allows its five million representatives in 50 markets to run a business from their phone, create and share marketing content and personalise recommendations for regular customers.

Since the pandemic kicked off, the beauty brand has seen a 200% uptick to digital transactions. In the first half of this year, the number of Avon reps has also grown twofold as social selling becomes more relevant to people looking to embrace a more remote and flexible way of working.

Avon sells three lipsticks every second, seven bottles of fragrance every second (which it claims is more than any other brand) and two bottles of its Anew skincare products every second.

In a world of Glossiers, Beauty Pies and Drunk Elephants, however, Avon has an image problem. It’s failing to keep up with these ‘cool-girl’ brands and engage a younger generation of women. Even its chief brand and beauty officer, James Thompson, concedes that over the past few years Avon has been “underestimated” from a brand perspective.

As a result, its launching ’Watch Me Now’ a significant global campaign that will run in more than 70 markets globally calling on people to reconsider their views of the company.

The premise behind the push is that Avon has been transforming women’s lives by “doing beauty differently” for 135 years. The ads – which will run across OOH, digital and press – nod at Avon’s heritage as a purpose-driven business that gave women the power to make an independent income in the US before they even had the right to vote.

‘Watch Me Now’ underscores the power of beauty to create opportunities for people to earn on their own terms, and highlight’s Avon’s own support for causes including domestic abuse and breast cancer – with the business fundraising £20m for charities relating to the latter cause and teaming up with Coppafeel to encourage women to check their breasts regularly.

The hero ad celebrates the success of the underdog and highlights the unexpected and underestimated aspects of the Avon brand, its people, activism, and products – for which Avon has been granted more than 750 patents and 300 awards.

For Thompson, it’s less a campaign and more a “fundamental repositioning”.

“There’s a parallel with how Avon as a brand has been underestimated over the past few years,” he says pointing to the fact that the brand has 98% awareness but a “much lower” consideration among customers.

“We need to blow the dust off and reinvent ourselves for another generation.”

‘Watch Me Now’ was created in collaboration with Wunderman Thompson but restrictions from the pandemic mean the work itself was produced in-house. The ads are also being supported by an extensive identity refresh.

Avon’s network of reps will also be central to spreading the message. Influencers in their own right, Thompson says the brand’s sellers are its “first media channel”.

“We’ve equipped them with much better technology,” he explains, pointing to the Avon On app which allows them to do everything from invoice customers to built assets for Facebook or Instagram from their phone.

“In the first months of this campaign we’ll be sending them content on a regular basis that they’ll be encouraged to share with customers. Over time, we’ll be giving them tools and education on how to make their own content too within the framework of this campaign. It’s effectively the world’s most democratic marketing programme ever.”

All that said, the brand isn’t planning to ‘do an Argos’ any time soon and ditch its hallmark physical brochure.

“It’s still a really important part of our business. It’ll be updated to reflect our new positioning and we’ll be improving the quality but we’re an omni-channel business – we have stores in some countries, we’re online elsewhere. We need to be where our customers can find us.”

By Rebecca Stewart

Sourced from The Drum

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The Changing Tide Of Influencer Marketing In 2020

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By Goldie Chan.

How has influencer marketing radically changed in 2020?

In my continuing series of “State of Marketing 2020,” I run interviews on the changing landscape of 2020 with key leaders in different business and leadership areas. For influencer marketing, I tap Lindsay Fultz, SVP of Partnerships at Whalar and influencer marketing expert for over a decade.

Goldie Chan: You’ve been in influencer marketing for nearly a decade. You’re considered a veteran in the industry. After all this time, what gets you excited?

Lindsay Fultz: This industry is fast moving. So much has changed. From types of creators and redefining what the word “influence” actually means, platforms, features, how cultural trends are intertwined and what makes them go viral, ways content can be repurposed, algorithms, to accessible data and now influencer marketing during a global pandemic and influencer and brand activism during a long overdue social justice movement.

Some things that get me excited:

  • Shoppable features that enable us to create strategies that tie ROI to particular influencers and activations. My company, Whalar is the only global partner to five social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok which not only means rich first party data but also access to all the cool private beta features like TikTok’s creator shopping program — The ability to tie video views from a specific influencer to actual purchases — that’s huge and something we’re very excited to pilot with a brand for a case study.
  • Interactive survey features that can double as consumer surveys and coordinating influencer focus groups for brands. Since the pandemic, we’ve been doing a lot of this at Whalar.
  • Live-streamed shopping which for 2020 is projected to be a $129B revenue stream in China. Instagram quietly rolled out their Live Shopping Feature in private beta a few weeks ago which I’m very excited to pilot with a brand. Whoever gets this right in the U.S will unlock a gold mine in Influencer Marketing for both creators and brands.
  • Virtual events! Marc Jacobs recently leveraged Zoom for their new product launch and Fenty VR and livestreams for their virtual house party. Both were super interactive and attendees left with keepsakes and an incredible, unforgettable experience. And we’ve only just scratched the surface on the possible integrations.
  • Leveraging influencers as your in-house production arm. Since the pandemic we’ve been getting a lot of briefs about partnering with creators behind the lens to create a library of branded assets from still and dynamic images to short and long form video content. This is quite exciting.
  • Even though it’s all P2P, partnering with creators that hit a B2B audience. Keynote speakers, marketers, entrepreneurs, thought leaders — because they are practitioners and educators, they attract an audience composed of C-suite executives, decision makers, people that control large marketing budgets and people that aspire to be in those positions. They are regularly in front of large super targeted audiences that people pay to gain access to — albeit now virtually.
  • Influencer and Brand Activism. This has been exciting to watch unfold and I think it’s a good thing! It’s been incredible seeing brands take a stance, and influencers unafraid to lose brand deals by taking a stance. It adds an extra layer to the influencer vetting process but it’s a very important layer when partnering influencers with brands — to make sure both brand and influencer viewpoints are aligned.

 

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

By Goldie Chan.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

 

Sourced from Forbes

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3 Actionable Insights from… retail prognosticator Piers Fawkes

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By Kenneth Hein

Cleanup in aisle five! Has there ever been a more disruptive time in retail? To get a better handle on what businesses should be doing to fix this messy situation, The Drum called up long-admired retail trends spotter and PSFK founder Piers Fawkes. Here are the three top actions he recommends:

1. Own the experience. Customers are anxious to return to their everyday retail and lifestyle routines, but stores and physical marketplaces are having difficulty offering any creature comforts as they reopen with limited services. Consumers are looking for brands to step in and streamline the purchase path or even reduce the frustrations of today’s in-store visits ‑ all to make the total shopping experience feel just a little bit more manageable. At Best Buy for example, after scheduling an in-store appointment, customers preparing for a visit receive a call from a store employee ahead of their visit to review store procedures and offer more information about their shopping purpose.

2. Reenergize the relationship. Regular store visits were an anchor for customer/brand relationships. As customers are forced to spend more time on apps, websites, and digital spaces, use this moment to re-establish and reenergize relationships with shoppers by focusing social engagements around community building and amplifying the voices of your most loyal customers. For example, Vans has done wonderful job celebrating, supporting and promoting the subculture of LBGTQ+ skaters called The Skate Witches with a series of online photo, video, and writing workshops. Vans have found the right way to say welcome to this culture in a way that is authentic.

3. Redesign the infrastructure. The retail industry as a whole is realizing a new level of nimbleness and flexibility necessary to survive constant consumer trends, marketplace evolutions, and global economic shifts. In doing so, retailers and brands are learning to navigate and thrive in environments that are less certain and consistent. Part of this evolution involves brands allowing customers to shape your brand’s long-term operational strategy and product direction. Enact this change by inviting customers into the design process, while reconfiguring retail infrastructure to respond to their real-time trends and behaviors. For example. makeup and skincare company Arfa promises 5% of its profit to the customers who participate in creating, testing, and marketing the products.

Piers Fawkes is founder of PSFK. Fawkes has inspiring leading brands, retailers and their partners on trends and innovation since 2004.

Feature Image Credit: PSFK founder Fawkes. / Randee St. Nicholas

By Kenneth Hein

Sourced from The Drum

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